Bloodclaw Fortress, Lower Wing
The cold stone of the cell seeped into Avelyn's spine, but she didn't move. Stillness was her weapon now. Not submission, not fear, just stillness. A quiet defiance honed by years of surviving cages and men who mistook her silence for weakness.
Moonlight streamed through the high, barred window, bathing her in silver. The light pulsed faintly across her skin, uncomfortably warm. Like it recognized her.
Like it remembered her.
She exhaled, curling her fingers into the stone bench.
Not again.
She wasn't the same girl who had been locked in silver chains at sixteen. She wasn't the trembling wolf who'd watched her village burn while hunters cheered. This time, she wouldn't run.
A sound broke the silence.
Boots.
Measured. Heavy. Confident.
She didn't have to look up.
The Alpha was back.
The door groaned open, hinges protesting. Damien Blackthorne stepped into the cell, shadows clinging to him like a second skin. His face was hard, his cheekbone marked by a thin scar where her dagger had kissed him.
"Comfortable?" he asked.
His voice was a low growl, gravel wrapped in silk. The kind that scraped the inside of your chest and stayed there.
Avelyn didn't flinch. "I've had worse."
"Considering you trespassed, slashed my face, and insulted me all in one night, you're lucky you're breathing."
"Considering you kidnapped me and threw me in a stone box, I'd say we're even."
His mouth twitched, like he wanted to smile but forgot how.
He stepped closer, the air between them charged. "You're not from these parts."
"And you're not used to being told no," she said, standing slowly. "That makes us even more dangerous."
They were eye to eye now.
The bond simmered between them, electric and heavy, like a storm just beneath their skin. Avelyn could feel it humming beneath her ribs, clawing at her better judgment.
Damien's jaw ticked. "Why are you really here?"
She lifted her chin. "I told you. I was running."
He narrowed his eyes. "Rogues don't run toward danger unless something worse is behind them."
"I'm not just a rogue," she said before she could stop herself.
The words hung there, too sharp to take back.
Damien caught the slip. "So what are you?"
Avelyn turned away. "A mistake, apparently."
He crossed the room in a breath. "You said something before. About this land not belonging to me. You knew where you were going. How?"
She glanced over her shoulder. "Dreams."
He stilled.
"Dreams?" he repeated.
"They're not visions. Not memories either. Just... echoes. Like I've been here before."
Damien's voice dropped. "And were you?"
Avelyn didn't answer.
Because she didn't know.
But sometimes, when the wind caught just right, and the trees whispered her name, she felt like she belonged here.
Or had died here.
He studied her, and something shifted in his expression. Not anger. Not suspicion.
Something closer to recognition.
Like he'd had those dreams too.
"You shouldn't exist," he said quietly.
"And yet, here I am."
Damien stepped back, the tension snapping between them. He turned, walking toward the door.
Before he left, he said, "You have no idea what you've walked into."
As the door slammed shut behind him, Avelyn's spine sagged just slightly against the wall.
He was wrong.
She knew exactly what she'd walked into.
She just didn't know why.
Hours passed. The silence deepened. Time in captivity always stretched thin, pulling at her nerves. But tonight, something else clawed at her.
Not fear. Not boredom.
A memory. Faint. Unwelcome.
A man kneeling at a burning altar. A voice whispering, Choose love. Or lose everything.
She gritted her teeth.
The dreams were getting stronger.
And they always started with fire.
The door creaked again. Lighter steps this time.
She knew it wasn't Damien.
The scent gave him away.
Kade.
He entered with a tray of bread, fruit, and water, offering a wary nod.
"I'm the nice one," he said.
"Still a jailer," she muttered.
He sat cross-legged across from her on the cold floor. "You scared him, you know."
"Good."
"Not many people do that. Especially not women half his size with a dagger and a death wish."
She picked at the bread. "I'm full of surprises."
Kade leaned back, eyeing her. "You've got the mark."
Avelyn froze.
"What mark?"
He gestured toward her shoulder. "The crescent. Glows under moonlight, doesn't it?"
She said nothing.
"I've seen it before," he said. "In a prophecy. One no one in this pack likes to talk about."
"The Moonscar."
He blinked. "You know it?"
"Only pieces."
His face sobered. "Then here's a piece you haven't heard. The Alpha who bonds with the Moonscar will either rise a god… or fall a ghost."
Avelyn's chest tightened. "They all think I'm the ghost."
Kade tilted his head. "Do you?"
She looked down at her hands. "I don't know what I am."
He leaned in. "Then maybe neither does the prophecy."
She met his eyes.
"What if they read it wrong?" he said, voice quiet. "What if doom isn't death, but… transformation? What if the curse isn't meant to kill him, but to change him?"
Her pulse thudded.
That possibility, it shook something loose inside her. A thread of hope. Or madness.
And deep inside, her wolf stirred.
He isn't doomed by me.
He's saved by me.
Later that night, Avelyn stood by the moonlit wall, pulling her shirt off her shoulder.
There it was.
The crescent mark.
It shimmered faintly, as if responding to something beyond this world.
She touched it.
And the stone beneath her feet trembled ever so slightly.
A whisper. Not heard, but felt.
Not destroyer. Doorway.
She backed away, heart thudding.
What the hell was happening to her?
Outside the door, Damien stood frozen. He hadn't meant to linger. But he had.
He'd heard enough.
The prophecy.
The dreams.
The scar.
Everything about her unraveled him.
But it was what Kade said that haunted him most.
What if they read it wrong?
Because deep down, Damien already suspected it.
And it terrified him more than any curse ever could.
Because if fate had been lying all along…
Then love wasn't his end.
It was his beginning.